'Start a couple of casks fore and aft, d'ye hear me, there?'
'Aye aye, sir,' said the master, a sparse, hard-featured man, now awkwardly willing to please; and a moment later whale-oil poured from the scuppers, spreading with extreme rapidity. The sea did not cease heaving, but the spray no longer flew - there was no white water, no breaking between the ships nor away to leeward.
'Should you like to go, Doctor?' asked Jack, turning kindly. 'I believe you have always wanted to look into a whaler.' Stephen bowed, and quickly tied a length of bandage over his hat and wig, tying it under his chin. Jack directed his voice towards the half-swamped whale-boats astern: 'You fellows had better go aboard, before you are drowned.'
It took some little time to get the Doctor safely down into the blue cutter; it took longer to get him up the oily side of the whaler, where the master stretched down an officious hand and Bonden thrust him from below. But he was scarcely on the filthy deck before the whale-boat crews came swarming aboard with their gear, the headsmen carrying their lances, the boat-steerers their shining harpoons. They boarded mostly on the quarter, coming up nimbly as cats, and raced forward with a confused bellow. The master backed to the mainmast.
'You left us to starve on the ocean, you rat,' roared the first headsman.
'You made all sail and cracked on - cracked on,' roared the second, shaking his lance, barely articulate.
'Judas,' said the third.
'Now Zeek,' cried the master, 'you put down that lance. I should have picked you up...'
The broad-shouldered harpooner, the man who had been fast to the big bull whale, was last up the side; he heaved his way through the shouting, tight-packed throng; he said nothing but he flung his iron straight through the master's breast, deep into the wood.
Returning to the Surprise covered with blood - a useless investigation, heart split, spinal cord severed - Stephen was met with the news that Martin had been taken ill. He dabbled his hands in a bucket of sea-water and hurried below. In spite of the activity on deck the gunroom was an example of the inevitably promiscuous nature of life at sea, with two anxious-looking officers sitting at the table with biscuit and mugs of soup in front of them, the cook standing at the door with the bill of fare in his hand and the grizzle-bearded lady of the gunroom at his side, all of them listening with concern to Martin's groans and stifled exclamations in the quarter-gallery, or rather the nasty little enclosure just aft by the bread-bins that served the gunroom for a quarter-gallery or house of ease, the deck being too low for anything more luxurious than a bucket.
Eventually he came out, fumbling at his clothes, looking inhuman; he staggered to his cabin and fell on to his cot, breathing quick and shallow. Stephen followed him. He sat on a stool and said in a low voice, close to Martin's head, 'Dear colleague, I am afraid you are far from well. May I not do something - mix a gentle palliative, a soothing draught?'
'No. No, I thank you,' said Martin. 'It is a passing... indisposition. All I need is rest... and quiet,' He turned away. It was clear to Stephen that at this stage there was nothing more he could usefully say. And when Martin's breathing grew easier he left him.
The rest of the ship was full of life, with prisoners coming aboard with their chests and a prize-crew going across to take over; and as usual the whaler's hands were being checked against her muster-book by Mr Adams, the Captain's clerk, in the great cabin. Jack and Tom Pullings were there, watching the men, listening to their answers, and making up their minds how they should be divided. They were heavy, sad, disappointed men at present, with the whole of their three-years cruise taken from them in a moment; but their spirits would revive, and many an enterprising band of prisoners had risen upon their captors and seized the ship. Moreover sailors from the northern colonies could prove as troublesome and pugnacious as Irishmen.
It appeared, however, that no more than a score of them belonged to the original crew from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and New Bedford. In three years many had died by violence, disease or drowning, whilst two or three had run, and their places had been filled with South Sea islanders and what could be picked up in the odd Pacific port: Portuguese, Mexican, half-castes, a wandering Chinese. A fairly simple division, though the Surprise was already somewhat short of hands.
The last, a thick-set youngish man who had lingered behind, came to a halt before the table and called out, 'Edward Shelton, sir, headsman, starboard watch: born in Wapping,' in a strong, undoubted Wapping voice.
'Then what are you doing in an enemy ship?' asked Adams.
'Which I went a-whaling during the peace and joined this here ship long before the American war was declared,' said Shelton, his words carrying perfect conviction. 'May I speak a word to the Captain?'
Adams looked at Jack, who said, 'What have you to say, Shelton?' in a tone that though mild enough promised nothing.
'You don't know me, sir,' said Shelton, putting a doubled forefinger to his forehead in the naval way, 'but I seen you often enough in Port Mahon, when you had the Sophie: I seen you come in with the Cacafuego at your tail, sir. And many a time when you came aboard Euryalus, Captain Dundas, Captain Heneage Dundas, in Pompey: I was one of the side-men.'
'Well, Shelton,' said Jack, after a question or two for conscience' sake, 'If you choose to return to your natural service, to enter volunteerly, you shall have the bounty and I will find you a suitable rating.'
'Thank you kindly, your honour ,' said Shelton. 'But what I mean is, we cleared from Callao on the seventh, and while we were getting our stores aboard - tar, cordage, sail-cloth and stockfish - there was a merchantman belonging to Liverpool, homeward-bound from the northwards, in dock, tightening up for her run round the Horn. We cleared on the seventh which it was a Tuesday, homeward-bound too though not really full: not a right good voyage, not heart's content as you might say, but middling. And off the Chinchas at break of day, there was a four-masted ship directly to windward. Man-of-war fashion. The master said, 'I know her, mates: she's a friend. A Frenchman out of Bordeaux, a privateer,' and he lay to. There was nothing else he could do, dead to leeward of a ship of thirty-two guns with yards like Kingdom Come and the black flag flying at her masthead. But as we lay there he walked fore and aft, gnawing his fingers and saying, 'Jeeze, I hope he remembers me. God Almighty, I hope he remembers me. Chuck' - that was his mate and aunt's own child - 'Likely he'll remember us, don't you reckon?'
'Well, he did remember us. He hauled down his black flag and we lay alongside one another, matey-matey. He asked after the Liverpool ship and we told him she would be out of dock in under a month. So he said he would stretch away to the westward for a while on the chance of an English whaler or a China ship and then lie off the Chinchas again: and he told us the sea thirty leagues to the west-north-west was full of whales, thick with whales. We sailed together, separating gradually, and the day after we had sunk his topgallants there we were in the middle of them, spouting all round the compass.'
